The Real Ghostbusters episode 9 review

TheRealGhostbusters

Episode 009

Production number 75003 – 1986 ABC Season 1

“Look Homeward, Ray”

Written by Marc Scott Zicree

Plot Synopsis:

Ray returns to his hometown to be honoured as the grand marshal of the Winged Puma parade, celebrating the disappearance of a marauding beast of local folklore. Things go wrong when a childhood rival of Ray’s plots to make him look bad in front of the town by using a dangerous book of spells. It’s up to the Ghostbusters to save the town before the resurrected Winged Puma lays waste to everything in its path.

The Review:

This episode is our first real character piece of the series, this time focusing on Ray. It’s a classic homecoming story and it’s very well done. It’s great to see the series exploring the back story of its characters. Ray is, of course, from a small town and this is clearly the root of his child like naivete and aw shucks demeanor. The title of the episode is based on the novel “Look Homeward, Angel” by Thomas Wolfe and was inspired in part by old twilight zone episodes where characters return to their hometowns and things go haywire.

This might be a good time to talk about the music of The Real Ghostbusters. In the first season it was decided that, like the movie, the series should feature some songs to accompany action sequences or montages. To this end the band Tahiti was employed to write a number of songs for the series. From what I understand, Tahiti was either recommended by Ray Parker Jr. or recommended because of some affiliation with him.

In this episode the featured song is “Home Town Hero”. All of Tahiti’s songs are generic early 80s pop, catchy and fluffy but not exactly long on substance. Still, to this day when people think back on The Real Ghostbusters they’re often surprised to find themselves remember songs like “The Boogieman”, “driving me crazy” or “hometown hero”.

For me this episode is mostly notable as a character piece. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get as deep into Ray’s history as I would have liked. The big ghost isn’t particularly interesting though, nor is the story behind it. The villain of the episode is pretty pedestrian and boring. A decent episode but not one I’d consider required viewing.